A flexible system has been created and characterized which allows the semisynthetic assembly of novel tRNA genes and then the in vivo measurement of the maturation, modification, aminoacylation, and overall ribosomal function of the new gene products. Experimentation with this system, and a study of natural tRNA sequences, has yielded a model for anticodon loop and stem structural requirements for efficient tRNA function at the ribosomal A site. This grant proposes to extend this previous work by systematically testing the anticodon structure-function model by synthesis of previously """"""""impossible"""""""" tRNA suppressors, by expanding the technique to other sections of the tRNA molecule, and by use of the method on translators of other codons. Furthermore, the product of this synthetic work is a large series of homologous tRNA's varying in structure, position-by-position, in a way never previously achieved. This homologous series can also be applied to detailed in vitro biochemical studies on the relation of structure to tRNA function in each of the elementary steps of genetic translation.
| Janas, Teresa; Janas, Tadeusz; Yarus, Michael (2012) Human tRNA(Sec) associates with HeLa membranes, cell lipid liposomes, and synthetic lipid bilayers. RNA 18:2260-8 |
| Smit, Sandra; Yarus, Michael; Knight, Rob (2006) Natural selection is not required to explain universal compositional patterns in rRNA secondary structure categories. RNA 12:1-14 |
| Janas, Tadeusz; Janas, Teresa; Yarus, Michael (2006) Specific RNA binding to ordered phospholipid bilayers. Nucleic Acids Res 34:2128-36 |
| Knight, Rob; De Sterck, Hans; Markel, Rob et al. (2005) Abundance of correctly folded RNA motifs in sequence space, calculated on computational grids. Nucleic Acids Res 33:5924-35 |
| Janas, Teresa; Janas, Tadeusz; Yarus, Michael (2004) A membrane transporter for tryptophan composed of RNA. RNA 10:1541-9 |
| Janas, Tadeusz; Yarus, Michael (2003) Visualization of membrane RNAs. RNA 9:1353-61 |
| Jadhav, Vasant R; Yarus, Michael (2002) Coenzymes as coribozymes. Biochimie 84:877-88 |
| Illangasekare, Mali; Yarus, Michael (2002) Phenylalanine-binding RNAs and genetic code evolution. J Mol Evol 54:298-311 |
| Jadhav, Vasant R; Yarus, Michael (2002) Acyl-CoAs from coenzyme ribozymes. Biochemistry 41:723-9 |
| Kumar, R K; Yarus, M (2001) RNA-catalyzed amino acid activation. Biochemistry 40:6998-7004 |
Showing the most recent 10 out of 56 publications
